Bil­lion­aire casino mag­nate Shel­don Ad­el­son, who spent tens of mil­lions of dol­lars try­ing to de­feat Pres­id­ent Obama last year, has a mes­sage for the White House: Call me.

In an in­ter­view with Na­tion­al Journ­al, Ad­el­son said he stands be­hind the White House’s push for Amer­ic­an mil­it­ary ac­tion against the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment. Per­haps as im­port­ant, Ad­el­son said he’s ready, if asked, to roll up his sleeves and help Obama — the “com­mand­er in chief,” as he re­peatedly re­ferred to him — cor­ral the needed votes in Con­gress for a strike.

“He is our com­mand­er in chief, wheth­er we like what he says polit­ic­ally or not,” Ad­el­son said late Monday even­ing.

The 80-year-old, one of the most in­flu­en­tial GOP money­men in the na­tion, is no Obama apo­lo­gist. He’s still the fin­an­ci­er who, along with his wife, spent nearly $100 mil­lion try­ing to de­feat Demo­crat­ic can­did­ates, Obama chief among them, last year. But he is also a pro-Is­rael hawk who said Amer­ica’s stand­ing in the world is at stake in the show­down with Syr­ia over chem­ic­al weapons.

“I would be will­ing to help out the ad­min­is­tra­tion, be­cause I be­lieve it’s the right thing to do. He is our only — we don’t have any oth­er com­mand­er in chief,” he said.

The com­ments are Ad­el­son’s first pub­lic re­marks on the Syr­ia situ­ation, al­though the Re­pub­lic­an Jew­ish Co­ali­tion, an ad­vocacy group that he chairs, came out in sup­port of a Syr­ia strike last week. His of­fer of a help­ing hand came as Rus­sia floated a dip­lo­mat­ic solu­tion in which Dam­as­cus would cede its chem­ic­al weapons to avoid a strike, something Obama called a po­ten­tial “break­through” on Monday.

For Ad­el­son, Is­rael has long been a de­fin­ing is­sue (he owns Is­rael’s biggest-cir­cu­la­tion pa­per). He said he wor­ries about mis­siles, and chem­ic­al and bio­lo­gic­al weapons fall­ing in­to the hands of Hezbol­lah. And he sees the po­ten­tial that Amer­ica might back down after Obama drew a “red line” against use of chem­ic­al weapons in Syr­ia as poor pre­ced­ent, in the Middle East and bey­ond. “I wouldn’t want to see North Korea come down and trample on South Korea be­cause they think they can do it with im­pun­ity. And the same thing with Ir­an and Is­rael, and Ir­an and Europe,” he said.

And so Ad­el­son said it’s time for Re­pub­lic­ans to line up be­hind Obama, however they feel about him per­son­ally. “Wheth­er we care or not about wheth­er he loses cred­ib­il­ity is not the is­sue,” he said. “The is­sue is wheth­er or not the United States of Amer­ica loses cred­ib­il­ity.”

Ad­el­son ex­ten­ded his olive branch — even if it comes with a thorn or two — as the White House is strug­gling to round up sup­port in Con­gress. Demo­crats are de­fect­ing, and Re­pub­lic­ans are uni­fy­ing in op­pos­i­tion. On Monday, top ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials de­livered clas­si­fied brief­ings to Con­gress, as Obama blitzed a half-dozen tele­vi­sion net­works with in­ter­views. He fol­lows up Tues­day with a na­tion­al ad­dress from the Oval Of­fice. More law­makers have been com­ing out in op­pos­i­tion any­way.

The Rus­si­an of­fer to have Syr­ia for­feit its chem­ic­al ar­sen­al — which the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment said Tues­day it would ac­cept — could avert the need to gath­er votes for mil­it­ary ac­tion (al­though ad­min­is­tra­tion sources were already re­portedly ex­press­ing some skep­ti­cism about the po­ten­tial deal).

But if the White House does reach out to Ad­el­son — “I’m hop­ing if they see my com­ments that sup­port them in your pub­lic­a­tion,” he says — it would make for the most un­usu­al mar­riage of polit­ic­al con­veni­ence. This, after all, is the man Demo­crats set out to make the biggest GOP bo­gey­man in Amer­ic­an polit­ics last year, cast­ing him as the un­matched sym­bol of a warped cam­paign fin­ance sys­tem.

Ad­el­son doesn’t seem to care: “Amer­ica has to back up their com­mand­er in chief.”

“Would I have set the red line? Prob­ably not. Would I hope that he didn’t set the red line? Maybe,” Ad­el­son ad­ded. “But the fact is, he did. He set it for our coun­try”¦. I love our coun­try. I’m a pat­ri­ot; I’m a cit­izen; I’m a vet­er­an. And so I’d like to do what is in the best in­terests of our coun­try.”

Though Ad­el­son is among the most feared and in­flu­en­tial donors in Re­pub­lic­an polit­ics, it’s not clear how many votes he could ac­tu­ally move.

“Listen, I’m not qual­i­fied to turn this thing around. I mean I don’t have that kind of clout,” he said. “I might be able to call up a hand­ful of friends, a couple hand­fuls of friends, and say, ‘This is the right thing to do, why don’t you sup­port him.’ “

Ad­el­son isn’t selling a Syr­ia strike as a pan­acea. “It’s a two-edged sword,” he said of jump­ing in­to a Syr­i­an civil war that pits the gov­ern­ment forces back­ing dic­tat­ori­al lead­er Bashar al-As­sad against rebels who have ties to ter­ror­ist net­works. But he said that chem­ic­al at­tacks launched by As­sad were non­ethe­less across the line.

“I come down on gas not be­ing used,” Ad­el­son said. “Jew­ish people have a his­tory of gas killing off their people, and al­though it was done in a dif­fer­ent way, I don’t want any­body to be killed, par­tic­u­larly in­no­cent people, wo­men and chil­dren, older people. Some­body goes out and car­ries a rifle and starts shoot­ing, they’re fair game. But in­no­cents shouldn’t be tar­geted.”

It sounds very much like the case that Obama and his ad­min­is­tra­tion have been mak­ing in speeches and in­ter­views around the world

“Al­though we have polit­ic­al dif­fer­ences — and we may have a lot of them — what’s good for the coun­try is clear to me and it’s un­mis­tak­able,” Ad­el­son said.

And today that means back­ing the man he spent so much money try­ing to de­feat.